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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25116358">MAG 94.5: Under Observation</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fruitbattery/pseuds/fruitbattery'>fruitbattery</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), more detail in the end notes but i stick to jonny sims's rules for what not to write mostly</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:26:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,202</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25116358</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fruitbattery/pseuds/fruitbattery</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Statement of Eynah Hornman, regarding a series of accidents while walking their dog. Original statement given July 6th, 2001. Recording by Jonathan Sims, head archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>MAG 94.5: Under Observation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Set around episode 93-99. Check end notes for content/trigger warnings, and please feel free to comment any I've missed and should add.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>*click*</p><p>ARCHIVIST: Statement of Eynah Hornman, regarding a series of accidents while walking their dog. Original statement given July 6th, 2001. Recording by Jonathan Sims, head archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.</p><p>ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT): I’ve always had a hard time with responsibility. Ever since I was little, no task assigned to me would ever get  done on time. I was always a fantastically messy child, and would often waste whole weekends confined to my bedroom “until” I cleaned it. My parents had to let me out for school, of course, and they never deprived me of family meals or the bathroom, but the battle between their insistence on my room staying in a shape where they could stand to see it, and my attempt to have control over my  living space, meant I was essentially grounded many weekends. Even when something truly messy happened in there– a knocked over potted plant, the family’s ornery cat sneaking in and vomiting–it would take me hours to pick up enough of my possessions for my dad to come in with the vacuum or the carpet cleaner. I would just… sit on the floor, refusing to start.</p><p>The continuation of this pattern through my teenage and adult years was well known to my friends, which is why I was so surprised when my friend Art told me his Golden Retriever had had a huge litter of puppies, and wouldn’t I like a few? I declined, of course, but over the weaning period, he just kept pestering me. They’re so cute, he said! You won’t be able to keep your eyes off of them! Who can keep their eyes off a puppy?</p><p>Now, I know what you’re thinking. Spontaneously deciding to take on a young puppy, let alone, as it turned out, two, when I knew I had a history of irresponsibility, was not a good choice. I don’t know why I did it, but eight weeks later, Art showed up at my door with two crates, two leashes, a bag of kibble, and two squirming, jumping bundles of love. I fell in love instantly, and named them Artemis (after Art) and Athena. As it turned out, caring for the puppies came completely naturally to me. They were little golden angels– potty trained in three weeks, never bit me or any of my friends, and after a few weeks of training, already knew how to sit on command!</p><p>I grew to love taking them out for walks, too. Artemis had a lovely mint green collar and leash, while Athena had a blue one, and they behaved like the perfect little angels they were– never tangling the leashes together, trotting along through my neighborhood of two-family houses and low-rises, sniffing daintily at the grass.</p><p>This all changed when the dogs were about seven months. We were out for our typical morning walk before work– about seven thirty A. M., I’d guess. It was a dewy morning in early May. We were all three walking happily along when, out of nowhere, both dogs tugged hard enough on the leashes for their collars to slip off, and ran off into the backyard of the house we were passing. It took me by surprise– nothing like this had ever happened with them before, so I wasn’t expecting it at all. I caught up with them quickly– they were still fairly wobbly runners– and brought them back out to the street, praying nobody in the house had noticed me running into their backyard.</p><p>As I sat the two of them down, scolding them lightly and clipping their collars back on, I  felt a prickle in the back of my neck. Turning around, I saw a person watching me from the driver’s seat of a parked car across the street. Now, I know that to most people I look like a woman, and so I’m used to getting watched by creeps. This was different, though. The person’s eyes weren’t scanning me up and down like I was used to. They were staring intensely, yes, but when I turned around, they were looking right into my eyes, and didn’t react at all when I gave them an indignant look. I’ve never enjoyed eye contact on the best of days, and this was seriously creeping me out, so I finished leashing Artemis and Athena  and hurried along on  the walk. The dogs seemed a bit more nervous than they normally would, but their baseline behavior was so perfect that this little deviation really wasn’t a problem.</p><p>As we continued on, though, it kept happening. The next one was about a block down, on my side of the street this time. This one looked like a mother and child– the child was sitting in a booster seat behind the mother,and couldn’t have been older than 5. Both of them had their faces pressed up against the slightly tinted windows, making them look slightly squashed and   sepia toned. The mother was making direct eye contact with me, as before, but the kid was staring at my dogs. I’ve had people stare at my dogs before! They’re cute! Perfectly behaved, matching, adolescent Golden Retrievers would draw any eye. But not like this. There was no hint of a smile, no waving, no movement to exit the car and pet them. Just… looking, as hard as both of them could.</p><p>It freaked me out enough to cross the street away from them. I told myself I wasn’t  going to look back, of course, but I did– just as I rounded the block, I chanced a glance behind me. Both faces were still watching me, now pressed to  the opposite windows. I hurried away, now sweating a bit.</p><p>It only  got worse  as I continued walking. I passed a construction site, one I had to pass to get to my favorite park, but it was different. I was used to some  stares from the workers, but that day they were all looking at either me or my dogs with all the intensity in the world. And, you guessed it, everyone I passed was doing the same. Other people walking their dogs, people driving by, I even saw a few faces pressed to upstairs windows. One of them had the bottom half of their shirt unbuttoned, as if they’d stopped getting dressed to come to the window and– not gawp. Not point. Just… look. </p><p>At that point, I decided I was just about done. I was acutely aware, now, of how I was walking, and I could feel myself trying to minimize the swing of my hips as I walked, as if that ever made any difference to some random watching me from the street. I pulled Artemis and Athena in towards me in a heel position, and turned around to go home.</p><p>As I was passing the construction site, though, several things happened at once. First, I noticed that the construction noises hadn’t stopped, even though none of the workers seemed to be paying attention to anything but me or my dogs. Seconds after I realized how unsafe that was, I saw one of the watchers– a man using a jackhammer to break up some concrete– slip. The jackhammer fell, still going, knocking him back onto the ground. His eyes followed me all the way down, and I ran, not wanting to know what happened next. As soon as I turned away, I noticed a car stopped in the middle of the road. Predictably, the occupants were staring at me– a whole family, this time, seven or eight people crammed into one side of a minivan, heads sticking out the windows like I was an animal on some horrible safari. What made it worse, though– so much worse– was that there was no one in the driver’s seat. No one to see the semi truck coming up behind them, the driver’s eyes locked on mine, not even seeing the small, helpless minivan in their way.</p><p>I turned and ran again before I had to see what happened. The crash was loud, but there were no screams, and as I ran I still felt nine sets of eyes burning into my back. </p><p>I thought I was in the clear as I approached my house. I was preparing to sprint inside, lock the door,  and not emerge for several days. I let my hopes rise too far. Behind me, as I reached the steps, I heard a car. I assumed at first that it was just driving slowly down the street, yet another intense-eyed driver staring me down, so I didn’t even turn around. That’s when I heard a crash, and the horrible sound of rending metal. The last thing I remember is shoving my dogs to the side as I watched a car, having smashed the front end of my own car where it was parked on the street, bearing down on me, the driver’s hands not even on the steering wheel as he stared at me.</p><p>I awoke to the smell of smoke and the sound of sirens in the distance, but mostly to the worried whining of two completely fine dogs  as they licked my face and pawed at my arms. Everything hurt, but I had to know what happened, so I sat up.</p><p>I was in the middle of what appeared to be the largest car crash I’d ever seen. The air was thick with dust, thick enough to have me coughing and struggling to catch my breath. There must have been a dozen cars, with maybe two people on average in each, and they were all. still. looking at me, cars all positioned as if to drive right over me. Many of them appeared to have broken noses or collarbones from seatbelts or deploying airbags, which made sense given how many of my neighbors’ cars and bins were damaged– but there wasn’t a single working eye in that carnage that wasn’t turned on me and the dogs. I was sitting in the middle of the worst theater-in-the-round imaginable. </p><p>There were even a few joggers in among the wreckage– some with mangled legs, crushed between two cars, but still upright and staring. One of them was even clutching a tiny dog. I recognized her from the park, though I couldn’t think of her name, and there was no reason for her to be here. She lived all the way across town. Yet here she was, and there was the dog, and both of them stared unblinkingly into my very soul, even as blood streamed from the owner’s legs. I’m pretty sure some of the people in the cars were too injured to be conscious– I saw many, many head wounds– but I knew, somehow, that they could all see me regardless.</p><p>The sirens were getting closer now. I don’t trust the police on the best of days– even less so when waking up at the center of a huge car accident I had no way of explaining. So I struggled to my  feet– luckily, no part of me was pinned under anything– and staggered up the stairs and inside, locking the door and closing all the blinds behind me. I didn’t want any news cameras on me either.</p><p>The police asked for my statement, but I told them I’d been sleeping in  with the flu, and given my obvious bodily soreness they seemed to believe me. I asked Art, a veterinary student, to come over and look at the dogs on the premise of them coughing a little, and he declared them fine. As soon as I was remotely well enough, I hired a contractor to fence in the backyard so I could let the pups out there instead of walking them as often. The contractor was friendly enough, but while he was working, I had the strangest paranoia about keeping the blinds closed.</p><p>ARCHIVIST: Statement ends.</p><p>Well, I’m not sure how much of this can really be substantiated. Mx. Hornman provided us no address of residence or contact information, so I was unfortunately unable to get in contact with them for a followup interview. In addition, Tim’s public records search did not turn up any person by the name of Eynah Hornman, although that’s hardly unusual these days. I told him not to push the matter further, out of respect  for Mx. Hornman’s privacy– I must wonder if it is rare they are provided such a courtesy these days.</p><p>It seems likely that the unfortunate Mx. Hornman had an encounter with our own “Beholding,” based on certain… clues to its nature that I have picked up on in the months since Jurgen Leitner’s… untimely demise. I had assumed it to work in slightly more subtle ways most of the time, but perhaps I was mistaken. Tim was able to find some reports of construction accidents and car accidents that matched the descriptions in this statement, though  never exactly, and none of them mentioned a person and two dogs being found at the scene or implicated in any way. I don’t believe our Institute is capable of doing anything more to help  Eynah Hornman. I suppose they’ll just have to watch their back.</p><p>*click*</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Content warnings: mention and discussions of objectification and misgendering (not portrayed); construction accidents; car accidents; implied child injury; stalking.</p><p>NOT discussed/portrayed, I promise: animal abuse/death.</p><p>Please keep in mind that I, the author, am trans.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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